I looked over my shoulder out the back window at the first dip of Strawberry Hill’s steep, twisty slope into Deadwood. There was no turning back now. Going down that hill would be like a wild sled ride straight to Hell.
Chapter Seven
My struggles with sharing a planet with Susan probably could be traced back to my mom accidentally getting pregnant with another man’s baby almost three years after I was born. The drunken one-night stand had happened during the six months or so when my parents were separated and on the verge of divorce, leaving my mom in a helluva situation until my dad stepped back into the picture and rescued her.
In spite of being adopted at birth by my dad and growing up under his roof, Susan was not my father’s daughter—not physically, of course, but also mentally. They were night and day. The fact of her birth origin had remained unknown to Susan for decades, until I opened my big mouth in my twenties and spewed the truth about the family’s secret in a flash of frenzied rage.
I still hung my head about that not-so-shining moment.
But back to Susan … It wasn’t that I blamed my mom for Susan being one bubble off plumb. She and my father raised my sister with the same rules and values as those laid out for my brother, Quint, and me. My theory about the source of our constant clashing had more to do with mixing a good-for-nothing playboy’s genes with my mother’s flower-power DNA to produce a daughter who not only had a bulb or two burned out in her string of Christmas lights, but who also took great joy in smashing the pretty blinking bulbs in other people’s strands.
Mainly mine.
Repeatedly.
My mother had spent one night in the arms of a man who was totally opposite of my father both physically and mentally. Ironically, the spawn of that union had grown to be the bane of my existence, not my dad’s.
Actually, now that I thought about it, Susan was only one of many banes for me. I seemed to be populating a village of them these days.
My cell phone rang, interrupting my trip to the past. A look at the screen made me sigh—the heavy, tired kind of sigh, not the lovesick sort that I usually did around Doc, who was currently aiming a raised brow my way in the rearview mirror.
“What do you need, Mom?” I answered, giving away the caller’s identity in answer to Doc’s questioning look.
Silence greeted me in return.
I checked the phone’s screen. The call timer was still running. “Mom? Can you hear me?”
A hissing sound came through the line, followed by, “… she’s worried you won’t …” hiss, crackle, “… I can’t calm her down …” silence, “… need to talk to her.”
“What did you say, Mom? You cut out there for a bit. Who’s worried about what?”
“Mommy, I miss …” silence, “… where are you? Layne doesn’t think you …” hissssss, “… make it in time?” My daughter’s voice came through broken up—due to both the lousy connection and her hitching sobs mixed between her words.
My throat tightened. “Baby, I’m on my way, I promise. Tell Layne we’ll be there in plenty of time for Christmas.” I crossed my fingers, shooting a worried glance at Natalie. She crossed her fingers, too.
“I’m afraid …” silence broken by a short hiss, “… need to hurry before …” crackle, “Santa comes.”
“Don’t worry, Addy. A little blizzard isn’t going to keep Santa or me away.”
“Mommy? I can’t hear …”
Dead silence came through the line.
I checked the screen. The call timer had stopped. Shit. We’d been disconnected.
Another look made my heart sink. Actually, it was worse than that. “Damn it. I have no service. Does anyone else have service right now?”
A quick group check found us all up shit creek.
“Criminy!” I dropped my phone in my lap. “That was Addy,” I told Doc’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “I think she’s freaking out about the snow and us not making it down there for Christmas.”
His forehead wrinkled. “We’ll get there, Violet.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, scowling at the flurries pelting the windshield. “I hope so,” I whispered.
Natalie wound her arm around mine and shoulder bumped me. “Is Quint going to be home for Christmas?”
“Maybe.” I leaned against the headrest. “Mom said he called last week from somewhere way north of the Canadian border and told her he was going to try to make it back in time, but he couldn’t give any guarantees.”
The world outside the windows looked straight out of the Great White North, so my brother would feel right at home. However, with the blizzard blowing in tonight and tomorrow, blanketing everything in thick snow, I doubted Quint would be able to make it if he wasn’t already in town.
A short time later, we passed the road leading to Galena. Like Slagton, Galena had a few folks left rattling around in the old ghost town. However, unlike Slagton, Galena’s remaining population contained normal people living among the historic buildings and graves, not odd whangdoodles who refused to heed the EPA’s recommendation to leave due to contaminated water. However, I’d recently learned Slagton’s remaining residents had a different reason for staying put besides pure orneriness—one that made me cringe even more.
I checked my cell phone again. Still no service. I blew out a nervous breath, worrying my lower lip as I looked out one side of the vehicle and then the other. If we got stuck in the … No! I wasn’t going to go there. I looked at my phone again. The no-service indicator held steady. I bounced my knees, my chest tightening as I stared at my cell phone, willing it to work.
Cornelius
